Chapter 117 - ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTEEN

Chapter 117: Chapter ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTEEN

ANGEL

Daddy.

The word bloomed in my mind before I even saw him. I knew his footsteps. The rhythm. He emerged from the darkness and the tears came, the sting in my eyes intensified, blurring everything except the shape of him — tall, broad, filling the space the way he filled every space. His expression was dark, his face hardened with fury as he spotted me, and that brought more tears to my eyes. He was here, everything would be fine... right?

I hoped he could see how sorry I was. I shouldn’t have lied to him. Shouldn’t have left the house and gone to that club. I should have stayed at home waiting for him to return from work like the good girl he’d asked me to be.

Then the second figure stepped through the door.

Everything stopped. My thoughts. My tears. My heartbeat. All of it — suspended in a single, airless moment of pure, physical horror.

Damien.

He walked in beside Vincenzo like a second shadow. Dark hair. Grey eyes. A burn scar running along his jaw — ragged, angry red — the only proof that the explosion had touched him at all. He moved with that familiar, fluid grace that I recognized in my nightmares.

His eyes found mine.

Through the spotlight and the distance. All the time I’d spent trying to erase him from my body, my brain completely dissolved at the sight of him.

Those grey eyes locked onto me and I felt it — felt him — like a hand closing around my throat. And suddenly I was back on the island once again. I was back with him. My body was trembling, my teeth were chattering. The cold had nothing to do with it.

Something moved behind his gaze. Brief. Searing. A fury so intense it was almost blinding. Then it vanished. His face went blank again and this time a whimper escaped me.

I could hear his voice. His promise. Me calling him Daddy. His promise of a collar, it was licking through my brain at just the sight of him. Every word he’d ever whispered in the dark. All the time he’d been gentle and every time he hadn’t. It came rushing back in a flood I couldn’t stop.

And a tiny part of me — the part that made me want to claw my own skin off — was the collision. Two feelings that should not coexist in one body, slamming together inside my chest. Relief that Daddy was here. Terror that Damien was too, as well as a part of my heart that throbbed with the familiarity of him.

It was wrong.

I didn’t want the ugly feeling, but it was all tangled up so tightly I couldn’t breathe past them.

"Welcome, welcome." Jillian stepped onto the stage beside me. "My dearest brother and ex-husband."

Neither of them looked at her. Both of them were looking at me.

Daddy’s eyes swept over my body,

Damien’s eyes did the same thorough once over. A small smile curved on his lips, cruel looking as always.

"Jillian, what you’re planning, it’s not too late to stop now." Daddy spoke first. His voice was pure ice. "Let her go and we will forget about it."

"You actually think you still hold the cards here, Vincenzo?!" Jillian scoffed, a hysterical laugh tearing from her throat. "I control every single inch of this room! One wrong move—one step—and your precious, filthy little pet dies!"

She was pointing at me, her finger shaking, a deranged light blazing in her eyes.

"You threw away our life for a useless, bratty slut like her! Look at what I had to endure. Look at what you did to me!"

Her gaze rounded sharply on Damien, "And you, Dammy—" She spat the nickname like poison. "How could you choose her over me? How could you choose that wretched whore over your own sister!"

She was screaming now, veins bulging against her gaunt neck.

"You both deserve death. But before you die, I’m going to make you watch me ruin your precious Angel beyond repair." Her gaze swung between the three of us like a triangle. "You both sure didn’t waste your time getting here." She sneered.

One of the men stepped forward from the shadows behind me. The breast-grabber. His hand closed around my jaw, wrenching my face upward, and the gun in his other hand was raised — not aimed, just displayed. A reminder of who was really in charge.

"Jillian!" Vincenzo growled. The warning rumbled through the room.

"Who wants to go first?" Jillian ignored him, her arms spreading wide, her voice bright and completely fucking insane.

"Jillian, get that man away from her. We can talk."

Damien’s voice. This was the first time he’d spoken since entering the room. Low. Smooth. And all too familiar in a way that made my ears burn.

Jillian looked between them, hate boiling in her eyes. "There’s nothing to talk about! You sold me! I was your wife! The whole time it had always been that cunt of a bitch! And you —" She spun to Damien, her eyes blazing with betrayal. "You are meant to be my brother, yet—"

"Does it count that we’re adopted, dear sister?" Damien was cold as void. Not a shred of warmth or even guilt. "We have no blood ties. I owe you nothing. You were the one who insisted on marrying him. You wanted him and you got fucked up. That’s your business." His grey eyes caught the light. Turned silver. "And my business is her." He didn’t look at me when he said it, but I felt every word like a finger dragging down my spine. "Now get those men away from her. Or I swear..."

"Dammy, you keep forgetting..." Jillian reached between her breasts and withdrew a stack of cards. "Both of you are alive after walking into this building because I allowed it. Let’s play, shall we?" She held up the cards.

There were two colors. Red and blue.

Whatever that meant, my pulse was hammering.

"I prepared a wonderful reunion that will go better with a game." She held up two cards. Red and blue. "Pick a card," she directed at Vincenzo. "Red or blue?"